Remake the Beluga: Wait Until it is Ready?

All of this discussion now is why I started this post:

1. What Vasious mentioned
- Is it really worth it to have a delay? If enough people 'really' do not like this then that'd be something to think about. If it's just the wings on the back that's an easy fix.

2. The whole larger docks thing:
Yes, this is a major reason I started the thread. It's not just about the ship. It's about the fact that practically everyone thought we wouldn't get these things until we got the specialized platforms that go with them. This is where I start to mean people hung a lot of hopes and dreams on this thing. It emphasized a grander, more complex future for Elite. What this represents now is a contraction. It's also an unnecessary one if we are (and we are) getting new stations.
- all of this suggests rushed irrational thinking or a very strange change in direction
- either way, this design change changes the way we understand the game's scope to be heading... specifically related to our experience of gameplay. Instead of it getting towards my dynamic situations it is a shrink. This requires communication with the community as to why otherwise the expectations so far for what the Beluga represented in terms of advancing content related to ships has now folded. That's bad PR. Another reason I wrote this post.

Point is, all of this section needed discussion and now it is getting it. Otherwise it would just look like FD dropped the ball, cut a corner, or is shrinking. Instead I think we're seeing the rush to the Beluga instead of the Dolphin. And it does seem rushed.


3. CMDR Dreamstate
Concept 'art' yes... but one that had everything to do with large docks, not docking inside stations, bigger ships... more gameplay.

There's a lot of reason to figure out why this happened and ask the serious questions about what that means for the future of the game. It's not an issue as small as not liking the ships. That's why I asked they delay all of this. It makes no sense.


4. GJ51
And it makes no sense.

- Godsailsaqueen
~ Exactly!

Those of us with larger ships have really no use for this thing right now. If it was larger and there was some new gameplay to come of it then wonderful. Right now the Beluga just got shrunk and for no reason while adding nothing really. I mean, I enjoy the story reasons, but it doesn't add anything to our gaming experience. Again, all the reason in the world to delay this thing imo.

5. Kofeyh
I don't know what to think about instantaneous ship summoning. Especially when not from a dock to a dock.

6. Red Anders
Ditto. I thought it was a real step up from what looked like short range luxury yachts. Plus, everyone over at Jacques was getting excited the Beluga would represent


Anyways, I think the Beluga is just a bit of a shocker. I love that trimming up the wings makes it more or less fine, but the wider issues of what it represented I didn't really take it. I knew people were thinking of it as something to ferry people between Jacques and the Bubble. I knew that meant new space stations, but I didn't really put the pieces together.

1. The largest of the rear wings
2. The wider context of gameplay the Beluga stood in for raising questions about the future of the Panther whatever and big ships in the future.
3. A stutter in the game design process cutting out the stepping stone process of older ship designs: new player ships (cheap: dolphin) ... midrange ships (orca: expensive) ...giant things... Cutter/Corvette?
- I personally cannot imagine a reason to play in a Beluga. Even with passenger missions it isn't really doing more than those missions were you go to a system, fly around while you wait for an npc to show up, then drop off cargo. The only difference is this time the npc is on your ship telling you where to go and when to leave. It's like the data update missions too in this way. There's never enough time to reach any of the ones I got and they only update for 25,000 cr.
4. This doesn't look like it has any better Engines than the Orca. That makes its jump range around 18 to 31 max. I can pretty much hop on discord right now and watch the Jacques explorers read that and go, "We've been shafted again!" People were looking for ONE large alternative exploration vessel... and it didn't happen... Not from what this reads.
- This, in and of itself, would be enough for me to shelve the whole thing if I'd been FD. It would have been a nose-located cockpit with the potential for a very well swept back windshield (and more than enough room to be able to put floor windows in)... That didn't happen. So ya, in this sense Explorers are going to be right when they rage they've been shafted again. Another large ship and nothing for exploration.
- As for the cockpit. I actually like it for what the ship's to be doing. However, it will probably remain superseded by not being functional in larger deep space rolls that people had imagined for at least one of these new ships.
5. FD shot themselves in the foot by saying this is the last of two ships we're ever getting. I don't think they realize how much that spells out to people, "The simulator will continue to see updates on a 10 year schedule, but direct-ship-to-player content ceases as of this year."


P.S.
For anyone I'm not directly replying to or seem to be in direct disagreement with (this includes anyone feeling ignored): "I see your arguments as valid."
- I'm not disagreeing with you so as not to polarize the thread towards just my own opinions
- the wider context of the discussion is what wins out for me... not whom I agree with the most (including myself obviously)
 
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Remember the issues people had with the cutters appearance ? I doubt FDEV will listen to these kinds of requests even one bit.
 
As someone who designs similar stuff like this, stuff that has to be good looking and at least a bit aerodynamically functional.
I have to say i dont like it either.
 
When they were hyping about the cutter and Corvette there was a lot of talk about them being too large for the slot and I remember just as much for the beluga pre-gamescom.

The fact is we need bigger ship but then we need a whole new docking mechanic or new starports. And it just seems to me that each time they just scale it down to fit and be done with it.
 
My opinion is
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Why didn't you include NMS?

I don't really see NMS as a competitor. I never have.
- More so recently. They promised multi-player and didn't deliver is my understanding. Also, what few ships I saw from the demos looked like they came out of Star Fox 64.
- However, I do see NMS as distraction that could take people who would otherwise join Elite. A lot of my friends did join NMS over Elite, then messaged me to say they'd returned it on the same day. Generally everyone was like, "You told me so." I kept saying the game wasn't ready. Nice dinosaurs, but no game.

Star Citizen is in the same camp for me as NMS. I signed up for the very earliest kickstart stuff with that and quickly realized it was lingering on development. My earliest complaint was that I flipped over a fighter ship and didn't drift. This was very early beta, but it was a warning sign to me that game wasn't getting thought out. How many times are we going to keep seeing that one big battleship with crew that do NOT look like borg while we play as borg? The game's development is unfocused. It's like this thing lately where you can pay author to write a book... or play more Fallout 4. People do stupid things with their money. NMS and SC is two examples of amazing ideas without enough of a plan on the gameplay end of things.

Not all that long ago EVE was another example with Dust and Valkyrie. For a game that is primarily a PC game CCP tries hard to disassociate itself with the PC gaming community. Greed vs. Games and Community.



Anyway, I wanted to add a thought...
I said a few times that the PR leading up to the Beluga was that it and the Panther whatever was going to be a new class of ship and therefore a new class of docking station. That this needed to be explained the community as what happened since it represents a huge shift in what people imagined for the future of Elite.

I just thought of a counter argument to that which is, imagine Frontier decides to announce they'd consider making more ships? Suddenly there'd be pressure all over the place on them to make more ships. I think THAT is harder on a person than having the zero-obligations hanging over your art than if you've got to do something within a set frame of time.


And, forever said it... I think a lot of Star Citizen's ships are junky, ya. However, they're of the same quality of mesh, lighting, and texturing as Elite. Again, NMS is just Star Fox 64. That'd be entertaining with friends just like Star Fox was, but it's a very limited concept for a very limited community of people. Since they removed the community aspect I see NMS sinking like a brick until it turns up somewhere like the Warp in Warhammer: a place no developer wants to be.

But ya, I think FD is in this weird situation at the moment where they promised a lot towards what the Beluga represented and then what it is. It was NEVER promised to be that. And that's a healthy thing to keep in mind, but it was such a 180 for development compared to the huge thing people were imagining. I don't know either. There could be valid reasons for it all.

Here's one that hangs stands out to me after going to the Rift recently and Jacques and back a lot before that. Maybe FD has realized a design shift is necessary on the road ahead because the alien content would change how future ships operate. As a gamer of MMOs I find this kind of thinking stupid and optimistic (same thing to me). I'm a realist and I'm a cynic. However, I've encountered this in my own art. I'll be making something I think is amazing. But, when I have people stand inside it as it would look in 3D (rendered in Maya or 3Ds Max) they often point out something is wrong I didn't even care about. It's still wrong. Example: I made an underground tunnel all lined with crude wood log supports to be a sort of mineshaft. It worked for the settings, but it was supposed to convey being oppressive and dank. I used birch logs since that was supposed to be in the forest outside of it. It worked, but everyone hated it because the birch didn't match the stone. It gave it this weird off-color tone that was more carnival-esque. After a few weeks of getting together a better more sinister looking setting everyone was like, "Eh, moving on. The forest isn't working either," and the whole project dropped. We ended up making chairs for a patio or something.
Maybe the thing is that these alien ships or whatever the encounter will be is such that it will rip larger ships apart. Think Queen Elizabeth vs. Spanish Armanda. In any case, that's the fight we're apparently going to be having. Someone found a destroyed majestic class recently if the rumor mill is true.
 
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